Blue Run Flight Series II is a great small edition bourbon: Review

Blue Run Spirits

Since its launch in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Blue Run Spirits has made a big impact on the whiskey world by doing things a little differently. Rather than creating a core expression based on consistency, Blue Run has worked with whiskey industry veterans to distill and source bourbon and rye in limited quantities that often vary by batch. The company also releases what it calls “microbatches,” and the new Flight Series of six whiskeys is a testament to how that concept can work.

Blue Run was founded by a group that includes people who used to work for Nike and Facebook, and about a year ago the company was acquired by Molson Coors under its Coors Spirits Co. division, which launched in 2021 with the decent Five Trail Blended American Whiskey. Blue Run’s product lineup is pretty broad, having released cask strength, small batch, and single barrel bottlings of bourbon and rye in recent years, but that’s kind of the point. These are limited-edition and often expensive (some would say overly expensive) whiskeys that are carefully selected, blended, and curated. Former Four Roses master distiller Jim Rutledge came on board as “liquid advisor” a few years ago, and now Shaylyn Gammon, who previously worked for Campari on many Wild Turkey bottlings, has come on board as head of whiskey development. Last year it was announced that Blue Run would open its own distillery in Kentucky, but it will be years before a whiskey from there is ready.

For the second Flight Series, one of Blue Run’s micro-batch collections, Gammon blended three to four barrels of the signature high rye bourbon to create six unique batches. That means each bottle in the series will taste different, and the one I got to try for this review is called Joshua Tree Sunrise. It’s a blend of three barrels distilled at either Castle & Key, Bardstown Bourbon Company, or another unnamed distillery and aged in a non-climate-controlled warehouse in Bardstown, Kentucky. According to the press release, Gammon conducted their “sensory testing” outdoors during the blending. The idea was apparently to conduct these tests in an environment closest to the consumer’s taste, rather than the sterile environment of a lab, and to give the whiskey a chance to respond and adapt to temperature and humidity changes.

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That sounds like another whiskey marketing story in an industry that doesn’t really need more of them. Still, Joshua Tree Sunrise is a very good bourbon – and I attribute that more to Gammon’s blending skills and the quality of the whiskey she was working with than to the effect of sunshine and cool breezes. Again, the other five whiskeys in this series taste different and I wasn’t able to try those for comparison, but let’s take a look at this one. Joshua Tree Sunrise is bottled at 117 proof cask strength, which is strong but not too sharp. On the palate, it reads like a younger bourbon, maybe around four years old, but that’s not a bad thing. The nose is rich with fruit and grain notes and very little alcohol burn despite the high alcohol content. The palate opens with cinnamon, honey and brown sugar before developing flavors like blackberry, green apple, vanilla, caramel and espresso. There also seems to be a rye note, although I can’t confirm the mash of the whiskey, and the finish leaves a combination of black pepper and butterscotch candy as the sip fades away.

No, this bourbon doesn’t remind me of Joshua Tree, a place I’ve visited many times, but that’s OK (other names in the series include Yosemite Pine, Tahoe Powder, and Miami Sunset, which certainly don’t really capture the flavor of the whiskey either). Each of the Flight Series II bottles is priced at $120, and you can actually find them for less than $200 at online secondhand retailers. If the simple pleasures of Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey, or Elijah Craig appeal to you more, that’s a very understandable sentiment and this might not be quite to your taste. But if you’re a bourbon fan looking for something new and unique that’s a true small-batch blend, then this is a bottle to keep an eye out for—and if you can find all six to compare and contrast, all the better.

Score: 90

Every week, Jonah Flicker tastes the hottest and most interesting whiskies in the world. Check back every Friday to read his latest review.